What is the difference between exclusion, suspension and off-rolling?
Two are lawful formal processes with defined procedures; the third is unlawful and describes removing a pupil informally to avoid those procedures.
Suspension (formerly fixed-period exclusion). A pupil is removed from school for a defined period, up to 45 school days in a year. The school must set work for the first five days, and provide full-time education from the sixth day of any single suspension.
Permanent exclusion. The pupil is removed permanently. It should be used only for a serious breach or persistent breaches of behaviour policy, and where allowing the pupil to remain would seriously harm the education or welfare of others.
The procedural requirements in both cases: only the head teacher may exclude; the decision must be lawful, reasonable, fair and proportionate; parents must be notified immediately with reasons and information about their rights; and the governing board must review a permanent exclusion within a defined period, with parents entitled to attend.
Where the board upholds a permanent exclusion, parents may request an independent review panel. The panel can recommend or direct reconsideration, though it cannot itself reinstate.
Off-rolling. Removing a pupil from the register without a formal exclusion — typically by pressuring parents to "choose" home education or to move school, frequently with the implication that a permanent exclusion is otherwise inevitable.
Why it is treated so seriously. It removes a pupil in the school's interests, not the pupil's, while bypassing every safeguard the exclusion process contains: no formal reasons, no governor review, no independent panel, no recorded decision. The pupil disappears from the school's results and from accountability measures.
Ofsted has treated off-rolling as a specific concern in inspection, and schools have been criticised where patterns of removals appear before examination cohorts are counted.
Other unlawful practices: part-time timetables imposed without agreement and review; sending pupils home to "cool off" without recording it as a suspension; and refusing admission informally.
Managed moves are lawful when genuinely voluntary, arranged between schools with the parents' agreement, and are distinct from off-rolling precisely because of that consent.
General information, not legal advice.